Giddens School

Giddens School
620 20th Ave South

Mission (from the school’s website)

Giddens School provides an academically excellent curriculum enriched with a commitment to critical thinking and social responsibility. Staff and families create a community that nourishes diversity, sense of self, and love of learning. 

Big Picture

Giddens School provides an academically compelling program that is well rounded. Academic subjects are covered through integrated explorations, hands-on learning and personalized instruction. Diversity and social justice is a cornerstone of the program. Above all, the curriculum is crafted and explored mindfully. This leads to an intentional focus on all-round development – intellectual, social and emotional.

Key Areas

• Instructional Coaches: Giddens School is unique in that it has two full-time instructional coaches on staff. The instructional coaches play a significant, anchoring role in the development and delivery of the curriculum:

  • Observation and reflection: The coaches help teachers observe and reflect on individual students and the dynamic between students. They invite teachers to reflect on their own teaching through weekly meetings and planning time that is built into the school day.

  • Alignment in curriculum: They help teachers align the curriculum between grade levels. The use pre-created curricula as a framework to expand as they help teachers meet the needs of individual learners.

  • Personalization: The coaches research and support teachers in meeting the needs of individual learners. They also provide additional 1:1 learning support.

  • Multi-age classrooms: Multi-age classrooms help children engage with other learners of varying levels and interests. Learners get to both lead and follow in their time together in this mixed-age setting.

  • Academic integration: Basic skills including literacy and math are delivered through well-validated and expanded curricula. In addition, teachers pick themes to integrated subjects. For example, a theme on Navigation might lead to the study of significant historic navigations and explorations while also opening doors to understand space navigation and building airplane models.

  • Diversity and Social Justice: Giddens has long been known as the independent school with the greatest socio-economic and racial diversity. This is true and it is represented in the classrooms. Diversity also has a broader meaning at Giddens. The effort to reach learners with different needs and to explicitly weave social justice into the curriculum makes diversity come alive in a whole new way. Giddens partners with area organizations on community service projects. Read about their partnership with Green Plate Special here. Students from different grades buddy up and work at the food bank and senior center as well.

  • Social-emotional work: Giddens school partners with Roots of Empathy to bring babies into the classroom as part of their work to help learners develop empathy and compassion. Constant, on going, in the moment reflection and coaching on emotions and communication is enhanced through explicit instruction in the K-1 grades using the Second Step program.

  • Assessments: Assessments are conducted with the goal of developing a more nuanced understanding of learner’s needs and learning growth. Informal and in-depth assessments are conducted together with learners at the start of the year to help them state what they know and what they are still working on. Two other assessments in the year help update the picture.

  • Specialist offerings: Spanish, Music, Library, P.E and even Garden to foster a sense of environmental justice.

  • Pre-K: Giddens uses the Reggio Emilia approach to learning in the preschool setting. They co-create experiences with the children based on their interests. Teachers observe and document children’s work as a way to understand children and to help children know themselves as learners. Play and open-ended exploration is a significant part of the preschool experience.

• Extended day and Enrichment classes: Giddens has a compelling set of after-school activities offered on a season calendar. Activities include Chess, Choir, Music, Lego Robotics, Computer Animation and several offerings for Drama.

• Social Justice Speaker series and Parent education: The school fosters awareness on issues of social justice through lectures that are open to the larger community. Parent education talks make this a school for both children and parents.

Last words: If you are looking for a school that offers a well-rounded education that reaches every child with social justice and diversity issues at the heart of its curriculum this is the school for you. Giddens is a community-oriented school with a keen eye on the needs of education in the 21st century delivered in innovative ways to reach all kinds of learners.